Sightseeing, crafting, making new friends and keeping old ones.... all part of our three years (1096 days) in hot and often sunny Kuala Lumpur.

28 September 2011

Tea, tourists and a dodgy fish curry....

Our latest Malaysian adventure was a trip to Cameron Highlands, an area high on some mountains in the middle of the country, famous for its tea, strawberries and other farm produce. It is a popular destination because, being high up, the air is cooler and - allegedly - fresher. I say allegedly because if you go on a public holiday weekend, like we did, you end up being caught in long traffic jams (caused largely by bad parking), and stuck behind buses giving out obnoxious exhaust fumes that would definitely earn them a black mark for pollution back in the UK. Or, if you're really lucky, you could get stuck behind a dustbin lorry - very unpleasant in this heat....

It's fair to say that the weekend was, as my friend put it, a bit of a curate's egg. The bad was the jams, the many, many tourists, and the somewhat tacky feel to some of the main areas. (Anything that couldn't move fast enough had a strawberry motif on it!). Plus the dodgy fish curry mentioned in the blog title, eaten by Alex in the hotel on the Saturday night. It kept him up most of the night, and he was in bed all day Sunday and most of Monday :( But obviously it's OK, and we won't let it put us off going back to that hotel, because we got the cost of the curry back..... hmmm - not sure whether to be pleased that I at least got something back, or insulted by the paltry compensation!

The good was the fantastic scenery that could be found once you left the main road - just look at this:

Rows and rows of verdant tea bushes, stretching out across rolling hills.

Here is Caitie, enjoying the novelty of cooler air, and being able to wear a fleece!

The tea and cake we had at a plantation was lovely, and very welcome given that by then it was very definitely cool and more than a little misty! The strawberries we sampled were delicious too.

Would we go again? Possibly, in another year or two - but not on a public holiday weekend, and not to the same hotel!